Seven Years Late, I Exposed His Secret Home

Chapter 3

It belongs to me.

I was abandoned by my birth parents the moment I was born, and adopted by my foster parents when I turned three.

On my first day at their home, Mom clipped this pendant around my neck. "We hope our little Willow stays safe and happy forever. Your big brother has one too, but yours is the prettiest one, Willow."

But both of them left me far too soon.

Later, I met Maxwell. He was obsessed with mountain climbing and extreme sports.

Every time before he headed out on a trip, I'd fasten the pendant around his neck and make him promise he'd bring it back safe to me.

He'd hold me tight and swear, "I promise, I'll come back safe and sound."

That held true for every trip... except the last one. The one he never came home from.

The little girl froze, terrified out of her wits.

Maxwell kicked me away hard, snatched his daughter into his arms, and snarled at me through gritted teeth. "What the hell do you think you're doing!"

"I'm just taking back what's mine. Is that not allowed?"

He stared daggers at me, his gaze burning with hatred. He ripped the pendant off his daughter's wrist and hurled it straight at my face.

"Take your damn thing and get out of my sight!"

Piper Jennings gestured with her eyes to signal the security guards over, then said, "Call her an ambulance."

"Don't you worry, Mrs. Jennings. We'll take good care of this lady, we promise."

The whole group turned and walked out, leaving me alone.

I lay crumpled and broken on the ice-cold floor, the pendant clutched tight in my palm, and that's when the floodgates burst. I couldn't hold my tears back any longer.

But no ambulance ever came for me.

Two burly men hauled me into an unmarked black car and pulled a bag over my head.

They dumped me out in the middle of nowhere, beat me within an inch of my life, stripped me naked, and just drove off like nothing happened.

Every inch of my body screamed in agony. I couldn't move a single muscle no matter how hard I tried.

By the time dusk started bleeding into the sky, the howls of wild animals echoed closer and closer all around me. I finally scraped together every last drop of strength I had left and hauled myself shakily to my feet.

I stumbled and staggered through the dark for two whole hours before I finally spotted the glint of asphalt stretching in front of me.

That last few hundred meters? I practically crawled the whole way.

I flagged down a passing car, babbled out a plea for him to call an ambulance, and blacked out before I could finish speaking.

When I woke up, I was lying in a fancy private hospital room, all crisp sheets and soft lighting.

A nurse said, "Don't worry about healing up, Mr. and Mrs. Jennings are covering all your costs."

Three days later, Piper Jennings showed up.

She pulled out a bank card and held it out to me. "There's three hundred thousand dollars in here. That's more than enough to live on. I can bring a dead man back to life, so, of course, I can make a living person disappear from this world without a single trace...

"...like... a car accident."

I froze solid, unable to believe what I was hearing, and gaped at her. "It was you?"

She gave a cool, easy smile. "We're doing this for your own good. We don't want you to wear yourself out struggling, and we don't want that innocent child to come into this world just to suffer."

Gritting my teeth until my jaw ached, I took the card from her hand.

Death.

I never had any fear of death.

I'd thought about ending it all a hundred times before. One quick step and all the pain would be gone forever.

But not now. If I died, that's exactly what they wanted, and I wouldn't give it to them.

If I had to suffer, they weren't going to get off easy either.

A week later, I was discharged from the hospital and headed back to my familiar old cottage.

I sank down onto the sagging couch that had caved in long ago, and dialed the number of my brother's old teammate.

My brother was a SWAT officer. He'd died on a mission, sacrificing himself to save his teammates.

That teammate was Dylan Fletcher, and he was now the deputy director of the Metropolitan Police Department.

All these years, he'd kept trying to help me, but I'd stubbornly pushed away every bit of kindness anyone offered me.

It felt like the iron wall I'd poured every last bit of my strength into building around my heart would crumble to the ground the second anyone pried open even the tiniest c***k in it.

"Dylan, it's me, Willow... Maxwell Sanders isn't dead."